WoW Ravens

In this article I will try to present you a short description of what PvP means, followed by a more detailed description on the ways you can do PvP in World of Warcraft.

PvP comes from "Player versus Player" and it denotes fighting between the player's character and other human controlled characters in the World of Warcraft environment. This term is opposed to PvE, which comes from "Player versus Environment" and denotes fighting between the player's character and computer controlled characters, generally called "mob(s)".

Why is PvP different from PvE? Well, while in PvE you mostly fight a mob which is always facing you, has a high amount of hit points and low damage and is completely predictable about what it will do next, in PvP you fight against a character who is controlled by a (more or less) skilled human player who wants to kick your ass as much as you do. That means the enemy will try to avoid your hit range and angle, will have less life than a usual mob but will have the capabilities of killing you in seconds. PvP is much more challenging, being comparable in difficulty only with hardcore raiding.

Killing players doesn't earn you any money or item drops, so why do it? Well first, it does grants you some resource called honor. The honor is gained by killing players and achieving certain goals in battlegrounds (see bellow). Honor points can be spent, along with some marks of honor (gained in battlegrounds, see bellow) to get very good PvP rewards. The stats of these rewards will help your character to perform better, especially in PvP encounters. Finally, you feel much better when you outskill a human opponent than an AI controlled one, so the satisfaction pays the effort.

While less present in the early form of WoW, Blizzard started to pay more attention to PvP lately, and this is due players demand and also some other MMORPG titles that are in development and promise a very good PvP system. Here are some classification of PvP in the World of Warcraft:

This one takes place in special instances between two teams of players, usually from opposing factions. There are two ways of achieving this:

A battleground is an instance where two teams from opposing factions (that is one from Alliance and one from the Horde) are trying to win in a special environment (battlefield) by achieving certain goals which reward the player with certain amounts of honor points. Winning a battleground gains three marks of honor specific to that battleground (used in purchasing PvP rewards) while loosing it will gain only one mark of honor. Leaving a battleground before it ends (either by winning or loosing) will result in a negative buff that won't allow you to join another battleground for 15 minutes (Deserter). You can enter a battleground by speaking with emissaries in capital cities or by speaking with battlemasters at the battleground specific location. There are four different battlegrounds in WoW:

- Warsong Glutch (WSG) - a battle between the Warsong orc clan, who is conducting a lumbering camp in ashenvale, and the Silverwing night elf clan which is defending it. The game is a classic "Capture the Flag" scenario

- Arathi Basin (AB) - a battle between the Defilers undead faction and the League of Arathor human faction to control the Arathi Basin, a region very rich in various resources. The game consists of capturing and holding certain locations marked by flags to gather resources, the team who gathers a specified amount of resources first wins.

- Alterac Valley (AV) - a battle between the Frostwolf orc clan (where Thrall is originating from) and the Stormpike dwarven expedition. This battleground is by far the most complex one. The teams must conquer and destroy certain objectives defended by mobs and the opposing team. In their aid, they can trigger certain reinforcements like giant mobs or other friendly mobs to help them in battle by collecting and turning in certain resources within the battleground. The goal of the battle is to kill the opposing faction boss, which is an elite raid boss, with a huge amount of hit points, being quite hard to kill.

- Eye of the Storm (EoS) - added in the "Burning Crusade" expansion, this battleground is a battle between draenei and blood elves for controlling this region in Netherstorm, rich in ethereal energies. The goal is to capture and keep certain resources by amassing players who must stay a while around the victory point (four of those on the map) and capture a flag which spawns in the central zone and bring it to one of the controlled bases. All this actions gain resources and the team who gathers enough resources the first, wins.

Arenas are opened to high level players and are the most competitive form of PvP. You can play unrated games (you won't earn anything by playing them) by speaking with an Arena Battlemaster in any of the big cities or near the arena location. Rated games can be played only by high level players (currently lvl 70) and only if the player is part of a team. The player can be part of three different teams at a specific moment in time, each team for a different type of games with different number of players: 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3 and 5 vs 5. Each won game will increase team's rating, while a lost game will decrease the rating. At the end of each week, the ratings from all teams the player is part of are evaluated and converted into Arena Points, and the player gets the amount of points which is highest from the three. In order to earn points, the team must play at least 10 games for that week and the player must play at least 30% of those games. Arena Points can be spent to buy PvP rewards of exceptional quality (epic). Also by winning an arena season you gain access to certain features, like Legendary mounts and specific titles  
assigned to team members.

Dueling can take place between players of the same faction and defeating one player doesn't result in it's death, but in reducing it's hit points number to 1. Dueling is also common in PvE realms.

At level 55 and above, players can enter regions with World PvP scenarios. There are two such regions in Azeroth, Eastern Plaguelands and Silithus, and almost each region in Outland has such a scenario. While different in their objectives and rewards, all of them share the concept of capturing and holding multiple objectives, which usually yields buffs for all members of the winning faction in that region and also some marks that can be turned in for specific rewards (usually of Rare value). These objectives can be accomplished either solo or while part of a group (which is easier and faster).

These can happen only on PvP realms and consist of fighting with the enemy faction upon random encounters.

A special form of Random Encounter where the ganking player is attacking an enemy player found in a disadvantaged position: while fighting with a mob, dueling, low on hit points, etc.

A technique that consists in waiting an enemy player to get to life again so it can be easily killed again because of half of it's hit points and mana/rage/energy points.

As I mentioned above, there are two types of realms regarding PvP: PvE (Normal) realms, where a player can fight an enemy faction player only if both agree on a duel, and PvP realms, where a different policy applies: there are three types of regions:

- Alliance regions - an alliance player found here can be attacked only if it has it's PvP flag on, or it initiate the fight himself/herself
- Horde regions - same as above, but valid for horde players
- Contested territory - players from both factions can be attacked on sight.

All these forms of PvP are there waiting for you to outskill other players and get nice rewards, both emotionally and in-game.